Category Archives: Detroit Ghetto News

This east side house in Detroit is definitely for sale. But after months and months on the market and a few price drops, the homeowner isn’t after your money.

“It’s a real listing,” said realtor Larry Else. “My client is overseas and he told me he would be willing to trade the properly for an iPhone 6.

“It sounds to me like he wants the (iPhone 6+) version, but I think he’s willing to negotiate.”

The seller will even swap the house for a 32-gigabyte iPad.

The three-bedroom, one-and-a-half bathroom brick colonial is on Britain and Lainge and is a fixer-upper.

But it has it’s “gems” as Zillow.com mentions, including a finished basement.

There is also a plush garden, and city views from the upper deck where a chair sits outside.

The bungalow was listed for $5,000 then dropped to $3,000, or the latest and greatest in Apple technology.

“It needs to be torn down,” said Ameir Walker.

Not everyone feels that way.

“I work on houses, so I would love to have it for that,” said Jamal Kemp. “It doesn’t take a lot of money to fix these houses back up. I would (be willing to buy it).”

There is one tiny little catch, the buyer will have to pay the back taxes $6,000 and counting, but like most things in life, that too is negotiable.

Is there anyway someone with the new iPhone can sweeten the deal, like you pay some of the back taxes and they throw in some headphones maybe a screen protector?

“We’d be willing to do a deal,” Else said. “They would be able to get it on quick claim but eventually they would have to play the back taxes. He might be willing to take anything maybe an Android, I don’t know, maybe an Android?”

This deal won’t last forever – the realtor says this house will stay on the market until Wayne County forecloses on the property which could happen in the next year.

A makeshift system of plastic pipe, garden hoses, duct tape and towels is providing water service to a downtown Detroit coffeehouse and an adjoining jewelry store as city repairs to the water system are on hold.

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department hooked up the system to a fire hydrant several months ago following a water main problem, but two area buildings are too unstable for immediate repairs, the Detroit Free Press reported (http://on.freep.com/1x1UU5z ).

Water and Sewerage Department spokesman Greg Eno said it will cost about $100,000 to have the buildings in the alley secured with netting and scaffolding before repairs take place. In a statement Thursday, the city said the money has been placed into escrow by the owner of one of the unstable buildings and work is taking place to strip loose brick from the building to make it safe for crews to repair the water main.

The temporary water hookup has been in use since July. It’s is another example of creative fixes to daily problems in bankrupt Detroit, where tires are used to plug missing covers from manholes and firefighters use a can filled with screws that’s knocked over by paper from a fax machine to alert themselves to emergencies.

Falling bricks from the building near the water main prompted the city to file a nuisance abatement lawsuit against the building’s owner. Work to the building is expected to take about two weeks, and once the site is safe, the city restore water service, Melvin “Butch” Hollowell, the city’s chief attorney, said in a statement.

The makeshift water system is the only way that Chris Jaszczak, 66, owner of 1515 Broadway, is able to serve coffee to his customers. All water served is boiled first, and customers at the coffeehouse a few blocks from the home of the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park aren’t offered tap water.

Broadway coffeehouse in Detroit, Michigan is still open

Crews need to dig to the water main to fix a leak detected at a neighboring business, the newspaper reported, but the worry is that vibration from heavy equipment will jar loose bricks and other debris on the two buildings. Jaszczak said pieces of one of the buildings regularly fall.

Dan Martinez, co-operator of the coffeehouse, advised a Free Press reporter to wear a helmet when walking in the alley.

Three million dollars can barely buy a new townhouse in Brooklyn these days, but it could be enough to purchase a bundle of more than 6,000 foreclosures up for auction in Detroit.

The cost of dealing with the many blighted buildings included in the Detroit mega-auction means a $3.2 million bid received last week—roughly the minimum allowable bid of $500 per property—will likely prove too high to turn a profit. “I can’t imagine that you are going to make money on this,” says David Szymanski, chief deputy treasurer of Wayne County, which is selling the properties.

So it’s all the more mysterious that the auction, opened with little fanfare earlier this month, has attracted any bidder at all. Still, at least one unidentified party is willing to pay $3.2 million take control—and responsibility—for scores of dilapidated homes. In fact, winning the bid could cost the lucky winner a small fortune beyond the auction price.
Story: Can Detroit Keep Empty Lots From Becoming Eyesores Again?

Finding a way to deal with Detroit’s blight is critical for the city’s future. A task force has already called for immediately tearing down 10 percent of all structures. The group surveyed the condition of every Detroit property and identified neighborhoods at a tipping point at which stripping them of blight could keep certain areas from slipping away entirely.

“I had cancer 12 years ago, and this is exactly like cancer,” Szymanski says. “If you don’t get it all, it’s going to come back.”

Wayne County has become a major owner of blighted properties, which it can seize when owners fall behind on taxes. The scale of its distressed holdings is unprecedented. When Szymanski joined the treasurer’s office four years ago, he called the treasurer of Cuyahoga County in Ohio to compare notes. His counterpart, whose domain includes Cleveland and was a bellwether during the housing crisis, asked: “Are you sitting down? We are foreclosing on 4,500 properties.” Szymanski says he replied: “I hope you’re laying down.” At the time, Wayne County had 42,000 properties in foreclosure.

The numbers have become only more staggering. This year alone, Wayne County has started foreclosure proceedings on 56,000 properties, with about 20,000 of them headed for auction. In 2015 county officials expect to foreclose on an additional 75,000 parcels.

In the past, these have been sold off individually or in small batches. That method didn’t always go well. More than three-quarters of the buyers soon fell behind on taxes, starting the cycle all over again. In 2011, as the Detroit News reported, some buyers were falling behind on taxes and going through foreclosures, only to repurchase their former properties—now cleansed of the back taxes. The county has since changed the rules.

Discussion among county and city officials about trying a bulk sale of Detroit’s least-desirable real estate never yielded results until after Detroit’s current mayor, Mike Duggan, was elected in 2013. But before the properties can be transferred to the city, which can offer them at lower prices, the law requires a county-level auction.
Story: A Call to Tear Down 10 Percent of Detroit’s Buildings, Right Now

“The idea was that no one would buy it,” Szymanski explains, so they would pass on to the city to handle. A closer look at the so-called blight bundle (PDF) created for the auction makes it clear why that auction is no bargain. The parcel includes roughly 3,000 properties that need to be torn down, plus some 2,000 empty lots, plus about 1,000 homes that are believed to hold some value. Everything is sold as is: The homes may lack furnaces or wiring and they may come with mold, tenants, or both.

To top it off, a condition of the auction requires the buyer to demolish the rundown buildings within six months—something Szymanski estimates will cost about $24 million.

Yet someone actually wants to buy the whole blight bundle. A single qualified bidder—Szymanski can’t reveal any details because the auction is still open—came forward and cleared the minimum bid. “It could be—and this is all speculation—that the people who are bidding on it are altruistic in nature,” Szymanski hints. He believes he has already met representatives of the group behind the $3.2 million offer, but he can’t say for sure.

A Detroit man is in critical condition after a pack of dogs mauled him on the east side Thursday evening.

Police said the attack was so vicious that the man lost his hands and feet, the Free Press reports.

The man, age 40 to 50, was attacked after at least five pit bulls escaped a house on the 4500 block of Pennsylvania. When police arrived, the man was naked and pinned on his back as the dogs mauled him.

Police shot at the dogs and killed one of them. The rest of the dogs were lured into their home.

Police returned this morning and found about 13 dogs, including puppies. All appeared to be pit bulls, police said.

The mauling remains under investigation, and the owner has been questioned.